EsoteriaA library of sacred & hidden knowledge
Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca

Liber XXXV · Witchcraft & Wicca · Chapter VIII: Witch Trials

Malleus Maleficarum: The Hammer of Witches and Its Legacy

The Malleus Maleficarum (1486) explained: Heinrich Kramer, the papal bull, the book's three parts, its misogyny and its real influence on the witch trials.

8 min read 1,835 words Updated

The Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer of Witches") is a Latin treatise on witchcraft written by the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer and first printed at Speyer in 1486 or early 1487. It argued that witches were real, that they worked harm through a pact with the Devil, and that secular and church courts had a duty to find and execute them. It became the most notorious book in the history of witch-hunting, although historians now see its influence as real but more limited and uneven than its reputation suggests.

Heinrich Kramer and the Origins of the Malleus§

Heinrich Kramer (c. 1430–1505), who Latinised his name as Henricus Institoris, was a Dominican friar from Sélestat in Alsace and a papal inquisitor in southern Germany. In 1484 he obtained from Pope Innocent VIII the bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, which confirmed the authority of Kramer and his fellow Dominican Jakob Sprenger to proceed against witches in the Rhineland and neighbouring dioceses. The bull complained that people of both sexes had given themselves to demons and were destroying crops, livestock and the fertility of men and women.

In 1485 Kramer conducted a witch-hunt at Innsbruck in the diocese of Brixen, where his aggressive questioning, especially about the sexual lives of the accused women, alarmed local officials. The bishop, Georg Golser, stopped the proceedings, the accused were released, and Kramer was told to leave the diocese. Many historians read the Malleus, written shortly afterwards, as Kramer's attempt to vindicate himself: a systematic case that witchcraft was a real and urgent danger, and a procedural guide meant to prevent the kind of failure he had suffered.

The book was printed with the papal bull at the front, which lent it an air of official approval that the bull itself did not give, since it predates and does not mention the book. An approbation from the theology faculty of the University of Cologne, dated 1487, was also attached to some copies; scholars have long noted irregularities in how it was obtained and presented. Sprenger, a respected Cologne theologian, may have had little part in the book; some historians believe the two men were on poor terms.

The Three Parts of the Hammer of Witches§

The Malleus follows the scholastic method: questions are posed, objections listed, and replies drawn from Scripture, the Church Fathers, Thomas Aquinas, canon law and exemplary stories. It has three parts.

Part One: the reality of witchcraft§

The first part argues that witchcraft requires three things working together: the Devil, the witch, and the permission of God. Kramer insists that denying the reality of witchcraft is itself close to heresy. He had to deal with the Canon Episcopi, an older church text that had treated women's night flights with the goddess Diana as illusions sent by the Devil. Kramer argued that the canon described a different, older superstition and did not apply to the new sect of witches, whose harmful deeds were real.

Part Two: what witches do and how to counter it§

The second part catalogues the alleged powers of witches: raising hailstorms, killing or harming livestock, causing impotence and infertility, killing infants (with special suspicion directed at midwives), transforming people into animals in appearance, and causing illness. It draws heavily on anecdotes, many from Kramer's own inquisitorial experience. It then discusses remedies, which are overwhelmingly religious: exorcism, prayer, the sign of the cross, holy water and other sacramentals. Kramer rejected countering witchcraft with further witchcraft, a common practice of village cunning folk, although he accepted some forms of popular protective custom. On the wider world of harmful and defensive magic, see maleficium, curses and protective magic.

The third part is a practical manual for judges. It discusses how accusations should be received, how witnesses (including those normally barred from testifying) could be heard, how to interrogate suspects, when torture might be applied and repeated, and how sentences should be passed. A distinctive feature is Kramer's argument that secular courts should take over much of the work, an approach that matched what actually happened in many parts of Europe, where most witch trials were conducted by local and territorial courts rather than by inquisitors.

Women, Sexuality and the Witch§

The most infamous chapter of the Malleus asks why witchcraft is found chiefly among women. Kramer answers with a long string of misogynist commonplaces from classical, biblical and clerical sources: women are more credulous, more impressionable, weaker in faith and more carnal than men. He offers a false etymology of the Latin femina as derived from fe (faith) and minus (less). Sexual themes run through the whole book, including intercourse with demons and the claim that witches could make the male member seem to disappear.

Earlier demonological writers had not usually made the witch so emphatically female, and historians disagree about how far Kramer created rather than reflected the association. The great majority of those executed in the European witch trials were women, roughly three-quarters to four-fifths overall, but the proportion varied widely: in some regions, such as Iceland, Estonia and parts of Normandy, most of the accused were men. Scholars such as Walter Stephens have also read Kramer's obsession with sex and bodily proof as a sign of anxiety about whether demons and their works could be demonstrated at all.

Printing History and Real Influence on the Witch Trials§

The Malleus was a product of the printing press. It went through more than a dozen editions by about 1520, then fell out of print for half a century during a period when witch prosecutions declined. It returned in a new wave of editions from 1574, often bound with other demonological works, and was reprinted until 1669. In total it appeared in about thirty editions. The popular claim that it was "second only to the Bible" in sales is a modern exaggeration.

Its influence was real but uneven. Later demonologists cited it, and it helped spread a learned model of the witch as a member of a diabolical sect rather than a solitary practitioner of harmful magic. Yet the worst persecutions, in the German territories between about 1580 and 1630, came a century after its publication and owed as much to local politics, legal structures, economic crisis and new demonological works as to Kramer. The Spanish Inquisition, which conducted relatively few witch executions, is reported to have advised its officials in the sixteenth century not to rely uncritically on the book. It was never formally approved by the papacy, and its procedures conflicted with canon law in important respects.

Other witch-hunting treatises followed: Jean Bodin's On the Demon-Mania of Witches (1580), Nicolas Remy's Demonolatry (1595), Martín Del Rio's Disquisitions on Magic (1599–1600) and King James VI's Daemonologie (1597). Each built its own case and often became more influential than the Malleus in its own country. For a survey of the period, see the history of witchcraft.

Critics, Sceptics and the Later Reputation of the Malleus§

The Malleus had critics from the start. Within a few decades humanist and medical writers questioned whether old women could do what it described. Johann Weyer, physician to the Duke of Cleves, argued in De praestigiis daemonum (1563) that many supposed witches were deluded or mentally ill and that the real deceiver was the Devil; his catalogue of demons is in the library as the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. In England, Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) attacked the whole edifice of continental demonology and mocked many of the stories found in Kramer. The Jesuit Friedrich Spee's Cautio Criminalis (1631) exposed how torture produced false confessions and chains of accusation, without naming the Malleus as his chief target.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the book became a symbol of the "Burning Times". Montague Summers's English translation of 1928, introduced with his own belief in the reality of witchcraft, shaped its popular image. Modern scholarship, especially Christopher Mackay's critical edition and translation (2006) and Hans Peter Broedel's study (2003), has placed it back in its context: a work of late medieval theology and law by an embattled inquisitor, important for understanding how the idea of the diabolical witch was assembled, but not a single cause of the witch-hunts. Its demonology also belongs in the wider history of demonology and of the figure of Satan and the Devil.

How Historians Use the Malleus Today§

For historians the Malleus is valuable less as a guide to what accused witches did than as evidence of what educated clergy feared and how they argued. Its accounts of Kramer's own cases reveal the village tensions behind accusations. It also shows that the "witch" of the trials was a learned construction placed on top of older beliefs in maleficium, not the survival of an ancient religion, a point that later undermined the Murray thesis.

Frequently asked questions§

Who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum?§

It was written mainly or entirely by the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer (Institoris). Jakob Sprenger is named as co-author in later editions, but most modern historians think his part was minimal or nominal, and the attribution may have been used to add prestige.

Did the Catholic Church officially endorse the Malleus Maleficarum?§

No. It was printed with Innocent VIII's bull of 1484, but the bull concerned Kramer's authority as inquisitor and does not mention the book. The Malleus was never adopted as an official manual, and some church authorities, including the Spanish Inquisition, treated it with caution.

How many people did the Malleus Maleficarum kill?§

No figure can be attached to one book. Historians estimate that roughly 40,000 to 60,000 people were executed for witchcraft in Europe between about 1450 and 1750, as a result of many laws, courts, panics and treatises, of which the Malleus was only one.

Is there a reliable English translation?§

Montague Summers's 1928 translation is widely available but unreliable. Christopher S. Mackay's translation (Cambridge, 2006) is the scholarly standard.

Sources and further reading§